MBP not starting up...

[Battlefield Fan]

I was listening to iTunes and browsing the web on safari in OSX10.6.1 and each program became unresponsive and the beach ball popped up. I then held in the power button to turn off my mac and I pressed it a second time to turn it back on. After waiting about 15 seconds on the gray screen a file folder with a question mark came up.

I set up a genius bar appointment for Saturday (store has been closed for remodeling and opens back up then) but I would like some knowledge as to what is going on before going into the Apple Store.

Thanks in advance...

 

[JediMeister]

Unfortunately, there's 2 root causes of this: either A) your OS is damaged so your system can't complete the boot process or B) your hard drive is fouled up. Of these 2, you're definitely hoping for A, because reinstalling the OS will probably fix it. If B, well, crossing my fingers that you have a backup somewhere...Booting to the 10.6 install DVD will identify how bad it is. If you can boot to the disc, run Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. If the internal hard drive is visible, run the disk repair/repair disk permissions options, which admittedly is a bit of a long shot. If its a no-go, reinstall 10.6. IF the drive does not appear at all in Disk Utility, you're gonna end up getting the drive replaced. If you have a Time Machine backup you can restore your data to the replaced hard drive; other backup methods may allow you to reimage your data onto the replacement drive, such as Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper if you had either set up. If there's no backup then you may have to start from a clean install of 10.6 and take inventory of what you lost.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

Alright well I poped in the install disk quickly before going off to class and the ssd did not show up. This means I'll have to contact OCZ since the drive failed but I still want apple tech to look at it and confirm before I go through this hassle

 

[mach42006]

It sounds like the same thing that just happened to mine...was just using firefox when everything became unresponsive. However instead of showing the folder when trying to boot up like you describe mine sits at the white screen with the apple logo for about 10 minutes before either going to a blue screen that I haven't gotten past yet or to the login screen and then to the blue screen.

I'm not sure how to boot from install cd is there a key combo to press during startup?

From the sounds of it this is bad news for both of us...ugh

 

[toolbox]

My MBP has been doing this too, most of the time it is in imovie / idvd and now it's with a external hard disk that i know is ok.

I get the spinning beach ball and i have to power it off. I hope apple release another update 10.6.1 seems to be breaking alot of things.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

It sounds like the same thing that just happened to mine...was just using firefox when everything became unresponsive. However instead of showing the folder when trying to boot up like you describe mine sits at the white screen with the apple logo for about 10 minutes before either going to a blue screen that I haven't gotten past yet or to the login screen and then to the blue screen.

I'm not sure how to boot from install cd is there a key combo to press during startup?

From the sounds of it this is bad news for both of us...ugh

It sounds like your data may have been corrupted rather than your disk going bad. Don't read to much into that though. Take it into local tech. Hopefully your data was backed up. To boot to the CD I thought you just hold down the option key as if you were booting into a bootcamp partition.

My MBP has been doing this too, most of the time it is in imovie / idvd and now it's with a external hard disk that i know is ok.

I get the spinning beach ball and i have to power it off. I hope apple release another update 10.6.1 seems to be breaking alot of things.

I really do not know what to say with your situation. I find it hard that OSX would be corrupting so many people's hard drives. It sounds like you may be experiencing a software incompatibly with the OS.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

Oh and to fill you guys in I took my laptop into my local apple store and the guy confirmed what I feared and already knew. The SSD is dead. He did bring up the fact that the SATA data cable may have gone bad.

I went home and replaced the SSD with the 320GB 7,200 RPM hard drive that shipped with my MBP and it worked. I restored from a time machine backup and I'm up and running again.

I plan on calling OCZ later today to RMA the drive. Hopefully that will go smoothly.

 

[mach42006]

Thanks for the input. Took mine into my schools computer place today and they booted it from an external hd. They verified and repaired permissions on my hard drive among other things. They said it there are more extensive and time consuming tests they could do on the hard drive but he thought it was an os issue and an archive and install would take care of it. Brought it home and tried it. I now get through the startup process rather quickly and even to the login screen. However after typing in my password it sits at the leopard 'galaxy' default background. I've let it sit there for 15 minutes now and it has not moved on.